By Tam Berhe, Esq. | The Berhe Law Firm, APC
Artificial intelligence is reshaping the legal profession faster than most people outside of it realize - and faster than many inside it are prepared to admit. As an attorney who has deliberately integrated AI tools into my practice, I think it's worth being direct about what AI can and cannot do in a legal context, and what it actually means for the people and businesses I represent.
The short version: AI is making legal work more thorough, more efficient, and more accessible. But it is not replacing lawyers. It is - when used properly - making them better.
What AI Is Actually Doing in Legal Practice Right Now
The popular imagination of AI in law tends to run toward science fiction: a robot lawyer that reads your contract in seconds and tells you exactly what to do. The reality is more nuanced and, in some ways, more impressive.
Document review and contract analysis. This is the area where AI has had the most immediate impact. Large language models can review contracts, flag unusual or potentially problematic clauses, compare documents against standard benchmarks, and summarize dense legal text in plain language. Work that might take a paralegal or junior associate several hours can be reviewed in minutes. This doesn't eliminate the need for attorney judgment - the attorney still has to assess what the flagged issues actually mean for your specific situation - but it changes the throughput significantly.
Legal research. AI-assisted legal research tools can rapidly surface relevant cases, statutes, and secondary sources from jurisdictions across the country. Traditional legal research in a database like Westlaw or Lexis requires carefully constructed queries and significant time. AI tools can now process natural language questions and return relevant results in a fraction of the time.
Document drafting. AI can generate first drafts of common legal documents - NDAs, operating agreements, demand letters, discovery requests - at a speed that allows attorneys to focus their time on customization, strategy, and review rather than starting from a blank page.
Client intake and triage. AI-powered intake systems can gather information from prospective clients, identify the relevant legal issues, assess urgency, and route matters to the appropriate attorney - all before the first attorney-client conversation. This reduces the administrative burden on small firms and improves the quality of the initial consultation.
What AI Cannot Do
Being honest about AI's limitations is as important as understanding its capabilities.
AI cannot exercise legal judgment. The law is not a lookup table. Legal analysis requires understanding not just what the rule says, but how courts have applied it, what the trends are, what arguments the opposing side will make, and how all of that applies to the specific facts of your situation. AI can surface relevant information; it cannot apply strategic judgment to that information.
AI can be confidently wrong. Large language models can generate citations to cases that don't exist, describe holdings incorrectly, and produce analysis that sounds authoritative but is factually wrong. This has already produced documented cases of attorneys filing briefs with hallucinated citations - a professional responsibility violation with real consequences. Every AI output in a legal context must be verified by a competent attorney.
AI cannot form an attorney-client relationship or provide legal advice. Tools that provide legal information - including AI tools embedded in law firm websites, legal research platforms, and consumer apps - are not providing legal advice in the professional sense. Legal advice is a specific, protected activity that requires a licensed attorney and carries obligations that AI cannot fulfill.
AI cannot understand your life. Estate planning, personal injury representation, business counsel - these areas of law are deeply human. They involve your family, your finances, your health, and your future. An AI can help organize that information and identify relevant legal issues. It cannot make the nuanced judgments about what matters most to you, what risks you should take, and what outcomes you actually want.
How We Use AI at The Berhe Law Firm, APC
We use AI tools at multiple points in our workflow, and I think it's important to be transparent about how.
Our intake process - through an AI assistant we call Harlan - uses a conversational AI to gather initial information from prospective clients, identify the relevant practice area, and help me prepare for the initial consultation. Harlan asks questions, takes notes, and provides me with a structured summary before I speak with you. This means our first conversation can be substantive rather than administrative.
We use AI for document review in contract engagements - identifying potentially problematic clauses, flagging deviations from standard commercial terms, and summarizing complex documents. Every AI output is reviewed by me before it informs any advice I give to a client.
We use AI for legal research assistance, cross-referencing AI-generated results against primary legal databases to verify accuracy. We do not cite cases we have not independently verified.
What This Means for You
If you're working with a law firm that has thoughtfully integrated AI into its practice, you should expect: faster turnaround, more thorough analysis, lower costs (because AI handles tasks that previously required billable hours), and better-prepared attorneys in your initial meetings.
What you should not expect is that AI has replaced attorney judgment, eliminated the need for verification, or made legal advice a commodity that can be automated. The attorney-client relationship remains the foundation of what we do.
ABA Formal Opinion 512 (2024) addresses the use of generative AI in legal practice and provides guidance on the competency, confidentiality, communication, and billing obligations that govern AI use in legal work. At The Berhe Law Firm, APC, our AI practices are designed to be compliant with that opinion and with the California State Bar's evolving guidance on the subject.
If you have questions about how we use technology in your matter, I'm happy to explain. Transparency about these tools is part of how we maintain the trust that legal representation requires.
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